Virgin Mobile France was a
cellular telephone
A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive telephone call, calls over a radio freq ...
operator in France. It launched in 2006 as a joint venture between
Virgin Group
Virgin Group Ltd. is a British multinational venture capital conglomerate founded by Richard Branson and Nik Powell in February 1970.
Virgin Group's date of incorporation is listed as 1989 by the Companies House, who class it as a holding c ...
and
Carphone Warehouse
The Carphone Warehouse Limited was a mobile phone retailer based in London, United Kingdom. In August 2014 the company became a subsidiary of Currys plc (previously named "Dixons Carphone"), which was formed by the merger of its former parent Ca ...
. The company operated as a
mobile virtual network operator
A mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) is a wireless communications services provider that does not own the wireless network infrastructure over which it provides services to its customers. An MVNO enters into a business agreement with a mobil ...
(MVNO), whereby it did not own or operate its own mobile network but instead used the network of
Orange S.A.
Orange S.A. (), formerly France Télécom S.A. (stylized as france telecom) is a French multinational telecommunications corporation. It has 266 million customers worldwide and employs 89,000 people in France, and 59,000 elsewhere. In 2015, ...
As of June 2014, the company was the largest MVNO in France, with 1.5 million customers, and had a market share of 1.3% at the beginning of 2014.
Carphone Warehouse and Virgin Group reached an agreement to sell their holdings to the French
cable TV
Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with broadc ...
operator
Numericable
Numericable was a major French Cable television, cable operator and telecommunications services company. Numericable was originally created in 2007 from the merger between former competitors Noos and NC Numericable networks. Numericable Group SA w ...
in June 2014 for €325 million, subject to regulatory approval. The sale was completed on 5 December 2014.
In November 2015, Numericable-SFR (now
SFR
SFR (; ''Société française du radiotéléphone'', ) is a French telecommunications company.
As of December 2015, it had 21.9 million customers in Metropolitan France for mobile services, and provided 6.35 million households with high-spee ...
) announced it would discontinue use of the Virgin Mobile brand, moving customers on fixed-term plans to its SFR brand, and those without contracts to its RED brand.
See also
*
Virgin Mobile
Virgin Mobile is a wireless communications brand used by seven independent brand-licensees worldwide. Virgin Mobile branded wireless communications services are available in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Colombia, Chile, Kuwait, Saudi Ara ...
*
List of mobile network operators of Europe#France
References
External links
*
Mobile phone companies of France
Virgin Mobile
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